14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone 7, the mobile operating system Redmond-based software giant Microsoft brought to the market last year, is reportedly offering a better experience to developers than Google's Android platform does. This is so courtesy of the developer tools that the platform is backed with, and of the reduced complexity that the building of apps for it involves.
Still young, Microsoft's mobile operating system is expected to grow fast, and to gain the second position on the mobile market in four or five years from now, at least this is what some analysts suggested.
With Symbian out of the way and Android the only mobile platform to trail in 2015, Windows Phone might finally become the appealing product that Microsoft has always hoped for.
However, since any mobile operating system is as powerful as the application ecosystem behind it is, this means that Microsoft would have to work hard on the application development area, to make sure the Windows Phone 7 platform would indeed succeed.
Apparently, this would be easier to achieve than what one might believe, since the existing developer tools for Windows Phone are more mature than those available for Android, a recent article on ComputerWorld reads.
According to the piece, Microsoft Australia’s Windows Phone developer evangelist, Dave Glover said recently that developers feel more attracted to Microsoft's platform and development tools, since the latter are more mature, and the building of apps for the OS is faster than for Android.
He also notes that the development of apps for Android involves a higher level of complexity, and that the level of malware targeting Google's platform is increasing too, which could be a deal breaker for enterprises.
Although Windows Phone 7 was aimed mainly at consumers initially, that would change with the release of the next flavor of the platform, which would bring new features into the mix, along with new application distribution models in the Marketplace, more business oriented.
As previously reported, Microsoft is set to introduce beta and private distribution of apps, with the latter being targeted mainly at enterprises who would like to have software available for their employees alone.
In addition to this, Microsoft plans the release of a new set of Windows Phone Developer Tools as of next month, enabling support for both Silverlight and XNA in the same app, along with access to more device resources, and other new features more.
Mango will arrive on shelves only in fall, with a series of improvements aimed at end-users as well, and Microsoft is making sure that developers would have their applications ready for the big launch.
The number of apps available at the moment in the Windows Phone Marketplace is small, only a little over 13k, but there are over 38,000 developers registered for the platform, and more software would certainly start to emerge soon, pushing the storefront to the third place on the market, past RIM's BlackBerry World and Nokia's Ovi Store.